Reghu Hariharan, Co-founder of Quantiphi, has more than three decades of experience in data, cloud, AI/ML, technology, consulting, and outsourcing. His journey spans various industries including Financial Services, Insurance, Retail, Media, and Healthcare, where he has consistently delivered exceptional value to clients. As a leader at Quantiphi, Reghu spearheads a dynamic team of leaders and professionals, leveraging his extensive expertise to solve what matters and deliver cutting-edge, responsible AI solutions worldwide.
Company: Quantiphi
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Reghu Hariharan: Having spent 30 years in tech services, I’ve gained experience in solution architecture, delivery, operations and business management. My academics were in computer engineering and I began my professional career as a technologist which matured into managing businesses in the tech sector and now into an entrepreneurial venture as one of Quantiphi’s co-founders.
Quantiphi serves several industries across the globe, with deeper relationships in healthcare, life sciences, and the public sector industry verticals. I spend the majority of my time working with our banking and financial services and insurance (BFSI) divisions and collaborating with our customers and partners to help them leverage the power of AI in transforming their businesses.
If you were in an elevator with Warren Buffett, how would you describe your company, your services or products? What makes your company different from others? What is your company’s biggest strength?
Reghu Hariharan: While highly unlikely, the thought of being in the same elevator with Mr. Buffet gives me a kick! After all he is an icon for both being great at what he does and for being consistently true to his value systems – be it business or philanthropy. I’d tell him that Quantiphi’s purpose is to help our customers experience the magic of applying science to transform their organizations responsibly! I’d elaborate that Quantiphi is a global, award-winning AI-first digital engineering company that solves what matters for enterprises at the heart of their businesses, leveraging the power of data and AI.
I’d tell him we are meaningfully impacting the value chains of the BFSI industry and helping more organizations achieve quantifiable business impacts. I’d detail our five key themes of focus in BFSI, including 1) Modernizing Processes & Platforms, 2) Promoting Sustainable Businesses, 3) Driving Hyper-Personalization and 5) most importantly, Creating a Smart Knowledge Workforce.
I would refer to some proof points and recognitions, including Frost and Sullivan, NelsonHall and IDC from an analyst standpoint and technology leaders like NVIDIA, Google Cloud, Snowflake and Amazon Web Services. The impact our teams have delivered in the marketplace has even landed us on Bloomberg TV, Fox Business News and in publications like Forbes, Financial Times, Fintech Global, Benzinga, Seeking Alpha and numerous other notable media outlets.
Quantiphi’s biggest strength is that we’ve built an organization where ordinary people with extraordinary aspirations connect with like-minded colleagues and customers to experience the magic of transformation through cutting-edge science.
Quantiphi differentiates itself in several ways, including:
Our AI Focus & Experience: We’ve completed more than 2,500 AI projects and partnered with 400-plus global companies across diverse industries, demonstrating our extensive expertise in tailored AI solutions.
Our Generative AI Leadership: As an early innovator, our proprietary generative AI platform baioniq enhances enterprise productivity and process efficiency.
AI Banking Solutions: We leverage a portfolio of solutions with cloud, computer vision, natural language processing, statistical and predictive modeling, large language models and generative AI to help make banking products smarter, customer experience frictionless, processes autonomous and minimize risks & anomalies. One of our key offerings, Dociphi, is an AI-driven document-processing SaaS product, designed to streamline and modernize document-heavy business workloads for the BFSI industry. It enables businesses to drive operational efficiency and reduce operating costs with minimal upfront investment. Recently one of our major banking clients leveraged a joint Quantiphi/NVIDIA solution we created – an LLM-powered chatbot that ultimately streamlined its IT operations through generative AI, resulting in a fivefold efficiency boost!
Collaboration with Industry-Leading Hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, NVIDIA, Snowflake and more:
With our proven expertise and capabilities in the applied AI space, we are one of the leading partners for AWS, Google Cloud, Snowflake, Nvidia and others. We also closely collaborate with partners to launch cutting-edge AI-powered products. Earlier this year we launched our AI-led Intelligent Underwriting Platform (AiUP), a fully automated and integrated underwriting platform built in collaboration with Google Cloud and Unqork that helps underwriters streamline the submission-to-quote process.
Exceptional Talent: With 3,500 skilled, passionate professionals across the company, our team has one of the highest ratios of certified cloud, AI and generative AI experts globally, distinguishing us from both startups and large enterprises.
Quiet quitting, The Great Resignation, is an ongoing trend causing many businesses to struggle to keep talent engaged and motivated. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued, and misunderstood in the workplace. In your experience, what keeps employees happy? And how are you adapting to the current shift we see?
Reghu Hariharan: Throughout my career, I’ve developed a keen understanding of market dynamics, customer needs and effective business strategies. But all that means nothing without the grit and smarts of passionate employees. Like anything else, the power of listening is important – be it employees, customers or partners. Second, as leaders, it is important to lead by example in everything we do to inspire our workforce, and third, we have to stay true to our existence as a business. Our employees expect to truly solve what matters for our customers. When they get to do that in exciting and fun ways, they find purpose. Transparency through intentional, effective and sustained communication is also important, especially with a global workforce. And finally, being in the AI space with a very tech-charged workforce it’s vital to take a human-centric approach to everything we do. Being empathetic and human in our interactions is super important.
Online business keeps on surging higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for the year to come and how are you capitalizing on the tidal wave?
Reghu Hariharan: I’m incredibly optimistic about the year ahead as Quantiphi continues to capitalize on emerging opportunities to help more enterprises solve what matters. Some of our key areas of focus include:
Growth in Generative AI: As Quantiphi continues to invest in research and development to help enterprises reach their full potential, we anticipate both continued generative AI adoption across industries and with it, new business opportunities.
Responsible AI: The importance of ethical AI cannot be overstated. And as systems become more pervasive Quantiphi remains committed to transparent and fair AI solutions.
AI in Financial Services & Insurance: Recognizing the challenges these industries face, we see AI as a tool to help improve operational efficiency, customer experiences and data-driven decision-making– helping more banks and insurers thrive in their industry.
Multi-modal AI Applications: We expect to see and develop more applications combining text, images, and videos to handle complex scenarios and deliver significant client value.
Upskilling the Workforce: As AI continues to transform business, we see the need for workforce upskilling. Quantiphi invests in training programs and partnerships to enhance AI literacy and build in-house capabilities. By focusing on these areas, we are well-positioned to leverage the evolving AI landscape, delivering innovative and responsible AI solutions for business success.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as THE real challenge right now?
Reghu Hariharan: As Quantiphi has transitioned from a handful of associates to an established enterprise over the past 11 years, balancing speed with scalability has been key. We’ve focused on streamlining internal processes, enhancing communication and fostering increased collaboration. By hiring top talent and equipping employees with the right tools and training, we are scaling projects, becoming more efficient and serving a broader client base.
As any enterprise will tell you, competing in a crowded market with both established players and newcomers is challenging. This is especially true when the rate of change in technology has been unprecedented. But by staying true to our core values and focusing on people, innovation and our responsibility to ethical AI, we’ve solidified ourselves as a leader in the AI and generative AI space. Looking ahead, we’re challenging ourselves to keep and exceed pace, continue to help our employees and customers grow and help more organizations shape the future of their businesses through responsible AI and generative AI.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Reghu Hariharan: The most underestimated aspect of running a business is the notion that it is about getting a few things right when it is really about the business in its entirety. It is not just about growth, people, partners, technology or investments. It is about all of those things in tandem with equal focus and rigor. Having said that, our employees are our biggest stakeholders and they are ultimately what has made Quantiphi soar. The passion at Quantiphi is unmatched and we’re grateful for the many teammates who call Quantiphi their work home and who make it so fun to come to our offices each day.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Reghu Hariharan: The business superpower I would like to have is super speed to keep up with everything we have going on at Quantiphi – but using our AI and generative AI in-house already helps us operate at a productivity level even The Flash would envy.
What does “success” in 2024 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision
Reghu Hariharan: As a pioneer of the AI-first digital engineering space, Quantiphi’s customers rely on us to solve what matters for their businesses and help them stay competitive. Our focus in 2024 has been to guide our clients through the intricacies of generative AI adoption and implementation. From pilot programs to full-scale production, we’re dedicated to helping more enterprises explore generative AI solutions and demonstrate how profoundly their businesses and bottom lines can be impacted and optimized through generative AI. So ultimately, our success is measured by our customers’ success in harnessing the power of AI and generative AI.
